Nellie and her younger brother Peter had suffered a great deal of abuse and hardship at the hands of their stepmother, father, birth mother, and even a boy she adored. 

Nellie's greatest wish throughout all of this was to find a place where she could leave happily with her brother without fear of their past following them both. But then another misfortune occurred, leading her to believe that no matter how hard she tried, her dreams would always be out of reach. 

However, things improve when Nellie meets a boy named Delian, who teaches her that life can be both kind and cruel and that it is not always one-sided. 

What happens when Nellie's now peaceful and almost perfect life is upended by an evil from her past life, who now claims to have nothing but good in its guts?

Dark Tunnel

No matter how hard Gift tried, she couldn't have any children; it was literally impossible. 


She was irritated to no end by her husband's children. She was fully persuaded at this stage that they were somehow involved in her vexing futility. As a result, she took it upon herself to make them regret their crimes against her. 


"A child who will not let his or her mother sleep will also know no sleep," according to a traditional Nigerian adage. Gift declared herself the 'demon tormentor' in response to those words. 


Nellie, thirteen, and Peter, nine, couldn't figure out what had gotten into their mother; she was recently always angry, hitting them at every slight provocation and sometimes none at all, she never stopped calling them insulting names at every given opportunity, and her eyes would skim over them every single time, waiting for them to make a mistake like a vulture waiting for its prey's final breath of life. 


During all of this, one would wonder where their father was. Why did he just fold his arms and watch as his children were harmed by the corner? The tragic response to that question is that he just didn't care any longer. 


Michael wasn't blind; he could see every time Gift harmed his children, and at first, he tried to persuade her to stop, but nothing he said or did worked. Then things got worse when his motorcycle repair shop mysteriously caught fire, leaving him jobless and completely reliant on Gift. 


﻿﻿Michael abruptly shifted and started to dance to his wife's tones. Michael completely abandoned his position as a good parent, allowing his new wife to run the house as she wished and making it a point of duty to never be present to see her cruelty. After all, why would he when there were so many bars and willing women to choose from? 


Gift was a woman who never embraced things as they were; she was always looking for deeper justifications for any problem that bothered her, and her quest for answers always led her to the unreasonable side of explanations, allowing multiple con artists to take advantage of her. 


She used to be very kind and trusting, and she never thought ill of her stepchildren. Even when her friends tried to persuade her that her stepchildren were a threat to her happiness, she refused to see them as anything other than hers. 


But Gift had a problem: she had a strong belief in the supernatural. A Prophet could do no wrong, a fortune-teller could say no lies, and the fear of witches, wizards, and demons was the beginning of wisdom, according to Gift. As a result of her desperate desire for children of her own, it's no wonder that on her many children-seeking adventures, she fell victim to bogus prophecies and fortune-telling, all accusing the two innocent children she adored and cared for as her own of being 'demons' capable of very dark sorcery. 


In a traditional African society, it is common to accuse an orphan, a housekeeper, or even Gift's stepchildren of being the perpetrators of any misfortune that befalls the family in which they find themselves. 


It's always easier to point the finger at someone else for our misfortunes than to face them head-on, and Gift did just that. She went in search of a face to vent her frustrations on, totally ignoring her medical test findings, which stated her infertility. So, taking advantage of her desperation and naivety, the false prophets and fortune-tellers gave her what she most desired: a place to vent her frustrations. And, of course, she lavished praise on them for their erroneous assistance. 


Gift made a deal with herself that as long as she lived and as long as they lived under her roof, they would be treated as hated vermin unworthy of the title of human beings.


Prologue “Heights of desperation”